Federal judge tosses Trump administration's ‘sanctuary city' lawsuit against Illinois
In her ruling, Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins said that the Tenth Amendment, which protects people from federal government overreach, shielded the decision of local law enforcement to avoid collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration agencies.
'It would allow the federal government to commandeer States under the guise of intergovernmental immunity—the exact type of direct regulation of states barred by the Tenth Amendment,' Jenkins wrote of the suit, which named Illinois, Chicago and a series of local officials as defendants.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Illinois prevents local officials from providing immigration information 'not otherwise publicly available,' while Chicago bars them from responding to inquiries from ICE without a warrant. State officers are also barred from complying with immigration detainers.
The Trump administration argued that the local laws were an 'intentional effort' to subvert federal immigration statutes and claimed that they facilitated the return of criminals to the public.
Chicago was one of the first major fronts in the Trump administration's aggressive mass deportation campaign, with federal agents swarming the city in the weeks after the inauguration.
The lawsuit was one of the first cases filed by the Trump administration against so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.
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CNN
9 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump's new tariffs have no precedent in the modern era
In just six months, President Donald Trump has remade global trade and upended a century of precedent. Trump on Thursday announced higher tariffs — again — on just about every country in the world. Even as some countries' tariff rates came in lower than they had feared, practically all goods coming in to the United States face a significantly higher tax than when Trump took office in January. The new trade regime will put in place the highest tariffs America has imposed since 1933, during the Smoot-Hawley era — a tariff bill that contributed to the deepening of the Great Depression. The higher tariffs threaten to disrupt the global economy again. Despite a milder-than-expected impact so far at home, there's already some evidence Trump's tariffs are — slowly — reigniting inflation and slowing the US economy. That danger is why leaders of developed countries for decades have largely lowered tariff rates and welcomed globalization — actions that have fueled the services economy backed by Big Tech and finance, but have also contributed to the offshoring of factories and manufacturing jobs. Last year, imports to the United States faced an effective tariff rate of 1.2%, a low tax that has fallen over the course of many decades. Declining tariffs in part persuaded US companies to make their products in foreign countries where labor costs were cheaper — and then ship those goods back into the United States while facing a relatively minuscule tax penalty for doing so. But that rate is set to surge to more than 18% when Trump's new tariffs take effect August 7, according to Yale's Budget Lab. Those taxes will be shared between exporters, importers and retailers, but economists widely expect consumers will pay for some of those tariffs in the form of higher prices. Companies that have for decades relied on overseas manufacturing to maximize profits and keep consumer prices low have declared massive tariff bills over the past few months. Apple on Thursday said it paid $800 million in tariffs last quarter and expects to pay $1.1 billion this quarter. Automakers, including GM, Stellantis and Volkswagen, also reported tariff costs of over $1 billion over the past quarter. Many major retailers, including Walmart and Target, have said recently they wouldn't be able to absorb all the tariff costs and would raise prices for their customers. Trump's tariffs are unpopular in polls, and businesses have fought them. But the White House has a decidedly positive view of its unorthodox strategy. Despite some negative reaction on Wall Street Friday, stocks remain near record highs. US gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, bounced back sharply in the second quarter by some measures. The labor market has remained resilient, and inflation is still reasonably close to normal levels. That has given the Trump administration confidence that it can levy tariffs around the world to accomplish its multifaceted goals: Grow revenue, revive America's manufacturing economy, impose maximum political pressure and restore the balance of trade between the United States and the rest of the world. Tariffs have worked in many of those regards: The Treasury Department reports about $150 billion in tariff revenue since Trump took office, up considerably from previous years. Numerous American manufacturers have announced major commitments to build new factories in the United States. Trump has used the threat of tariffs to impose his will on multiple countries to negotiate everything from peace deals to lower taxes. And America's trade gap briefly narrowed earlier this year. However, each of those victories comes with considerable caveats. Tariff revenue is paid in the form of a tax on US importers, not foreign countries as Trump routinely claims. Many of the companies' factory announcements were already in the works or are years away from taking place, and — considering America has about 400,000 open manufacturing jobs it can't fill — it's not clear where the labor force for those factories will come from. Trump's tariff threats don't always work and sometimes penalize US consumers, who have to pay higher prices as a result. And the trade gap, after countries worked through their pre-tariff inventories, is widening again. It's unclear how history will view this moment. Trump's grand trade experiment so far has paid off better than most had expected. But economists continue to fear a delayed shock reaction that could damage the global economy and take America's standing in the world down a peg.
Chicago Tribune
11 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
President Donald Trump injects new dose of uncertainty in tariffs as he pushes start date back to Aug. 7
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Trump has promised that his tax hikes on the nearly $3 trillion in goods imported to the United States will usher in newfound wealth, launch a cavalcade of new factory jobs, reduce the budget deficits and, simply, get other countries to treat America with more respect. The vast tariffs risk jeopardizing America's global standing as allies feel forced into unfriendly deals. As taxes on the raw materials used by U.S. factories and basic goods, the tariffs also threaten to create new inflationary pressures and hamper economic growth — concerns the Trump White House has dismissed. As the clock ticked toward Trump's self-imposed deadline, few things seemed to be settled other than the president's determination to levy the taxes he has talked about for decades. The very legality of the tariffs remains an open question as a U.S. appeals court on Thursday heard arguments on whether Trump had exceeded his authority by declaring an 'emergency' under a 1977 law to charge the tariffs, allowing him to avoid congressional approval. Trump was ebullient as much of the world awaited what he would do. 'Tariffs are making America GREAT & RICH Again,' he said Thursday morning on Truth Social. Others saw a policy carelessly constructed by the U.S. president, one that could impose harms gradually over time that would erode America's power and prosperity. 'The only things we'll know for sure on Friday morning are that growth-sapping U.S. import taxes will be historically high and complex, and that, because these deals are so vague and unfinished, policy uncertainty will remain very elevated,' said Scott Lincicome, a vice president of economics at the Cato Institute. 'The rest is very much TBD.' Trump initially imposed the Friday deadline after his previous 'Liberation Day' tariffs in April resulted in a stock market panic. His unusually high tariff rates unveiled then led to recession fears, prompting Trump to impose a 90-day negotiating period. When he was unable to create enough trade deals with other countries, he extended the timeline and sent out letters to world leaders that simply listed rates, prompting a slew of hasty agreements. Swiss imports will now be taxed at a higher rate, 39%, than the 31% Trump threatened in April, while Liechtenstein saw its rate slashed from 37% to 15%. Countries not listed in the Thursday night order would be charged a baseline 10% tariff. Trump negotiated trade frameworks over the past few weeks with the EU, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines — allowing the president to claim victories as other nations sought to limit his threat of charging even higher tariff rates. He said on Thursday there were agreements with other countries, but he declined to name them. The EU was awaiting a written agreement on its 15% tariff deal. Switzerland and Norway were among the dozens of countries that did not know what their tariff rate would be, while Trump agreed after a Thursday morning phone call to keep Mexico's tariffs at 25% for a 90-day negotiating period. The president separately on Thursday amended an order to raise Canada's fentanyl-related tariffs to 35%. European leaders face blowback for seeming to cave to Trump, even as they insist that this is merely the start of talks and stress the importance of maintaining America's support of Ukraine's fight against Russia. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has already indicated that his country can no longer rely on the U.S. as an ally, and Trump declined to talk to him on Thursday. India, with its 25% tariff announced Wednesday by Trump, may no longer benefit as much from efforts to pivot manufacturing out of China. While the Trump administration has sought to challenge China's manufacturing dominance, it is separately in extended trade talks with that country, which faces a 30% tariff and is charging a 10% retaliatory rate on the U.S. Major companies came into the week warning that tariffs would begin to squeeze them financially. Ford Motor Co. said it anticipated a net $2 billion hit to earnings this year from tariffs. French skincare company Yon-Ka is warning of job freezes, scaled-back investment and rising prices. Federal judges sounded skeptical Thursday about Trump's use of a 1977 law to declare the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency that justifies tariffs on almost every country on Earth. 'You're asking for an unbounded authority,' Judge Todd Hughes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told a Justice Department lawyer representing the administration. The judges didn't immediately rule, and the case is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court. The Trump White House has pointed to the increase in federal revenues as a sign that the tariffs will reduce the budget deficit, with $127 billion in customs and duties collected so far this year — about $70 billion more than last year. There are not yet signs that tariffs will lead to more domestic manufacturing jobs, and the U.S. economy now has 14,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than it did in April. On Thursday, one crucial measure of inflation, known as the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, showed that prices have climbed 2.6% over the 12 months that ended in June, a sign that inflation may be accelerating as the tariffs flow through the economy. The prospect of higher inflation from the tariffs has caused the Federal Reserve to hold off on additional cuts to its benchmark rates, a point of frustration for Trump, who on Truth Social, called Fed Chair Jerome Powell a 'TOTAL LOSER.' But ahead of Trump's tariffs, Powell seemed to suggest that the tariffs had put the U.S. economy and much of the world into a state of unknowns. 'There are many uncertainties left to resolve,' Powell told reporters Wednesday. 'So, yes, we are learning more and more. It doesn't feel like we're very close to the end of that process. And that's not for us to judge, but it does — it feels like there's much more to come.'
The Hill
11 minutes ago
- The Hill
Biden's autopen controversy says more about AI than you might think
Would a love letter mean the same if you knew it was written by a robot? What about a law? Republicans are asking similar questions in their investigations into former President Joe Biden's use of the autopen — an automatic signature machine that the former president used to sign a number of clemency orders near the end of his term. Trump and his allies claim that Biden's use of the autopen may have been unlawful and indicative of the former president's cognitive decline. If Biden had to offload the work of signing the orders to a machine, then how can we know he actually approved of what was signed? And if Biden wasn't approving these orders, then who was? It is unclear what the outcomes of these investigations will be. More importantly, however, these probes get at a larger concern around how different kinds of communication can lose their meanings when robots or AI enter the mix. Presidents have used the autopen for various purposes (including signing bills into law) for decades. In fact, the prevalence of the autopen highlights how, today, a presidential signature represents more than just ink on paper — it symbolizes a long process of deliberation and approval that often travels through various different aides and assistants. The Justice Department under George W. Bush said as much in a 2005 memo advising that others can affix the president's signature to a bill via autopen, so long as the president approves it. Trump himself has admitted to using the autopen, albeit only for what he called 'very unimportant papers.' House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) even used digital signatures to sign subpoena notices related to the investigation for his committee. President Obama used the autopen in 2011 to extend the Patriot Act. Even Thomas Jefferson used an early version of the autopen to replicate his handwriting when writing multiple letters or signing multiple documents. But the dispute around the use of the autopen is more than just partisan bickering; it is an opportunity to consider how we want to incorporate other automating systems like artificial intelligence into our democratic processes. As a researcher who studies the impacts of AI on social interaction, my work shows how automating legal, political, and interpersonal communications can cause controversy, whether via a low-tech robotic arm holding a pen, or through complex generative-AI models. In our study, we find that autopen controversies illustrate that although automation can make things more efficient, it can also circumvent the very processes that give certain things — like signatures — their meaning. Generative AI systems are posed to do the same as we increasingly use them to automate our communication tasks, both within and beyond government. For instance, when an office at Vanderbilt University revealed that it had used ChatGPT to help pen a condolence letter to students following a mass shooting at Michigan State University, students were appalled. After all, the whole point of the condolence letter was to show care and compassion towards students. If it was written by a robot, then it was clear the university didn't actually care — its words were rendered empty. Using GenAI to automate communication can therefore threaten our trust in one another, and in our institutions: In interpersonal communications, one study suggests that when we suspect others are covertly using AI to communicate with us, we perceive them more negatively. That is, when the use of automation comes to light, we trust and like each other less. The stakes of this kind of breach are especially high when it comes to automating political processes, where trust is paramount. The Biden fiasco has led some, like Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.), to call for a ban on the use of the autopen in signing bills, executive orders, pardons and commutations. Although Rep. McDowell's bill might prevent future presidents from experiencing the kind of entanglement the Biden administration has gotten caught up in, it doesn't address how other kinds of emerging technologies might cause similar problems. As attractive automating technologies like generative AI become more and more popular, public figures should understand the risks involved in their use. These systems may promise to make governing more efficient, but they still come at a significant cost.
